


Disappearances

by rainydayrambling



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 11:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3527225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainydayrambling/pseuds/rainydayrambling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan dreams up a picnic, which he and Adam share on a sunny Saturday morning -- amidst unresolved tension, Adam's slow realizations of what he wants, and lots of slow-burning, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disappearances

**Author's Note:**

> This story is made to fit in (though not chronologically) with my other Adam/Ronan fics so far. I hope you enjoy it!

Before the first kiss, and after the start of Adam’s private game of small, stolen touches, there was a day in the fields near Cabeswater. It was supposed to have been a Friday. Ronan’s plan was that they would all skip school and drive over together. “Team building,” he had said with his sharpest grin. Everyone was up for it, but Adam refused to miss school, so Friday was out. Yet somehow they ended up going on Saturday despite the fact that Blue had work at Nino’s and Gansey had plans with Helen so it ended up only being Ronan and Adam.

Adam wasn’t sure what to make of it, and on the drive over, as he sat in the passenger seat of Ronan’s car, he was all too aware of his own body, holding onto his hands in his lap to keep from doing something stupid, like brushing the backs of his fingers against Ronan’s hand on the steering wheel.

They didn’t talk much on the way over. Ronan’s music was blasting through the speakers, violent in a way that was comforting more than distressing (because it was a Ronan kind of violence, but Adam wouldn’t think about that).

It wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, or at least it wouldn’t have been if Adam wasn’t so focused on keeping all parts of himself on his own side of the car. But if Ronan noticed him behaving strangely, he didn’t say anything about it. He drove in silence, and parked the car on the outskirts of the grassy expanse that bordered Cabeswater.

Adam followed him out of the car. He didn’t know if they were entering the forest and wasn’t sure how he would feel if they did. Cabeswater was complicated, and while he wouldn’t have felt guilty about going in without the others (Cabeswater was everyone’s, after all, but it was his and Ronan’s a little bit more), it would have meant acknowledging something he wasn’t sure he was ready to acknowledge -- a kindred nature to him and Ronan that he didn’t particularly want made obvious (not now, anyway -- not yet).

Outside the car, the sun was so bright that for one moment, all there was in the world was light. Adam wondered if he might be dreaming, if he had dreamt the whole scenario: Ronan bringing him to the field, the drive with the loud music mid-morning on a Saturday.

The first thing that took form through the sunlight was Ronan, which did nothing to convince Adam that this was really happening. His eyes adjusted at the same time that Ronan said, “Come on, Parrish,” and that was what did it. Because, though he had never really thought about it, when Adam did dream about Ronan, Ronan always called him Adam.

When Adam realized this, he was suddenly afraid that coming here was a terrible mistake, and he had the distinct impression that he would ruin this -- the day, the field, everything with Ronan. But leaving wasn’t going to be an option (a lie; Ronan wouldn’t keep him here if he didn’t want to stay, but he did want to stay -- he only wanted not to want to).

What he wanted to want, though, was irrelevant. He followed Ronan deeper into the sun.

+++

Adam hadn’t known what to expect, had not even considered the idea that he might be able to guess what Ronan was up to. What he found, therefore, surprised him. It wasn’t one of those moments that was both surprising and inevitable, either -- what he saw didn’t fit seamlessly into what he knew of Ronan Lynch, although he supposed that if he paid more attention to this boy who had slowly become his friend then it might have fit better.

The field was all tall grass swaying in a light breeze, the sun getting caught in tangles of it here and there, alternating shining and shadow. Adam might have thought that Ronan dreamed the whole place, if he hadn’t seen it dozens of times on the way to Cabeswater. He’d never spent any time there though, and he found himself wondering why.

He considered pointing out that the day before -- the day of their original plan to visit -- wouldn’t have done the field justice, as it had been a gray, cool day, as opposed to this sun-bright and warm one. He didn’t say it.

If Ronan hadn’t dreamed the field, he certainly had dreamed what was in it. He led Adam to a patch of grass that had been tamped down, creating a flattened space in the middle of the field. In the space, there was an old-fashioned picnic blanket and basket -- clearly dream items because the blanket was too perfect to have ever been used while the basket had no handles (and who would ever buy a picnic basket with no handles?).

Ronan looked at Adam but Adam didn’t say anything, because he didn’t know what to say. He hardly knew how the same person who raced down streets in the middle of the night, who got a disturbing sort of glint in his eye at the idea of his best friend doing something dangerous, could dream up a picnic in the middle of a sunny field.

Ronan threw himself down onto the blanket and stayed there, face pressed to the fabric pressed to the ground. He said nothing, just spread his arms out to the side so that he looked like a cross someone had tossed down.

“A picnic?” Adam said at last, and only because he felt like he had to, felt like the silence had stretched a little too long.  
“Whatever gave you that idea, Parrish?” Ronan said, deadpan, without lifting his head off the blanket.

Adam was surprised by the hint of a smile that crept into his voice when he said, “A dream picnic?”

This made Ronan lift his head, but only enough that he could look at Adam with one eye. “Make a difference?” he asked.

Adam shrugged one shoulder and sat down.

“What did you pack?”

Ronan sat up now too, and Adam became quickly aware of the fact that they were completely surrounded by the tall grass of the field. It was so tall that it was as though the two of them existed in a pocket of empty space. No one walking in the field would see them until the moment they came up to the blanket. Adam and Ronan were quite alone -- more so than they had ever been, since now there was no chance of anyone joining them.

Adam breathed the air, which felt, as well as smelled, warm, and settled in.

“Don’t know,” Ronan said, answering a question that already felt a distance away. “Let’s find out.”

Adam laughed -- actually laughed out loud. He was beginning to think that Ronan might have dreamt this whole thing after all. “You just asked Cabeswater for a pre-packed picnic?” he said.

Ronan scowled at him, but the corner of his mouth turned up, and Adam didn’t know when he had gotten to know Ronan well enough to know that he was trying to hide a smile right now, but he knew it anyway.

When Ronan turned his attention to the handle-less picnic basket, Adam almost lost himself and reached out -- to do what, exactly, he didn’t know. Maybe brush his fingertips across Ronan’s sharp cheekbone, maybe just to tap his shoulder. But he had never stolen one of his little testing touches when they had been alone and he couldn’t do it now. He had a sense that it would be unfair, and he knew that it would be dangerous. Even when he decided not to do it, though, it was heavy in the air, forcing him to be aware of it. He wondered if Ronan could feel it too.

Ronan had begun pulling things out of the picnic basket. There were five of everything, Adam noticed -- a realization that was both a comfort and, he noticed with a twinge of unease, a little disappointing. It meant that he’d been hoping, somewhere inside himself, that this whole move from Friday to Saturday had been contrived (Ronan must have known, he had to have known, that Adam would never agree to skip school, whatever the reason).

“Sandwiches,” Ronan said.

“What kind?”

“How should I know, Parrish? They could be dirt sandwiches. Probably Cabeswater’s idea of a good joke.”

“Cabeswater wouldn’t feed you dirt, Ronan,” Adam said, the name slipping out before he could stop it, along with the soft sort of fondness he heard woven into his own voice. “It loves you.”

Ronan paused, but he didn’t look up. Then he started pulling things from the basket again and said, with a clear air of being carefully measured, “You know what Cabeswater loves, do you?”

Adam took a breath. “I am its eyes and its hands,” he said, grateful that Ronan (for once) wasn’t looking at him, because he was pretty sure his face had just gone a bit pink and it was not entirely because of the sun.

But he needn’t have worried. Ronan kept his eyes carefully trained on the basket and went back to listing what he found there. “Cookies, nice. Some jam, but I doubt we’ll get the jar open.”

“Why?”

“Cabeswater’s given me jam before, but I’ve never been able to get it open.”

“Cabeswater gives you jam?”

“My mom’s jam,” Ronan said.

Adam nodded, but he didn’t say anything because there wasn’t anything to say. He decided he would get the jam open. Cabeswater owed him that much, and he owed Ronan.

All told, they had ten sandwiches, a dozen chocolate chip cookies that were still warm as though fresh from the oven (nevermind that there had never been any oven -- the privilege of having dream things).

“Cabeswater was generous,” Adam said.

This time Ronan only nodded, tossed Adam a sandwich. He seemed nervous suddenly, keeping his eyes down and not saying much. It was a heady sort of feeling, knowing that Ronan was nervous around him, but it was also uncomfortable. Ronan didn’t get nervous. Maybe Adam did appreciate the fact that he had an effect on the boy, but that didn’t mean he wanted him worried and unlike himself.

“Come on, Lynch,” Adam said, a mirror of what Ronan had said to him earlier, snapping him back to the reality of things. Ronan might need that too, from time to time.

It worked. Ronan got less weird after that. He ate two sandwiches and picked apart a third to throw bits of bread at Adam. Adam ignored this through a whole sandwich, but when he got a bit of cold turkey in his ear, he gave up. He always ended up going along with Ronan’s schemes eventually. Before long, most of the ten sandwiches had been sacrificed to the effort of an old-school food fight.

They threw torn pieces of bread and turkey and cookies at each other like the teenagers they were and sometimes forgot that they were. When they finally ran out of food to throw, they fell down on the dream blanket, haphazardly beside each other, accidentally-on-purpose. Ronan was less than a foot away and Adam’s urge to touch him was stronger than it had ever been, but he forced himself to keep his hands where they were -- pressed palm-down beside his hips. He concentrated on the rough feel of the grass beneath the blanket and tried not to think about the ways it might be similar or different from the way the back of Ronan’s head might feel cradled in Adam’s palm.

And then the air was entirely too hot, too heavy, too stifling. Adam could feel Ronan watching him even though he wasn’t (for once) watching back. And he knew what would happen if he turned his head. He knew what would happen because he knew what he would do, what he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from doing. And he knew he wasn’t ready for that. He hadn’t made enough peace with it, its inevitability. He hadn’t made absolutely sure, yet.

So he sat up into the too-hot air and he broke through the heaviness. “We should get back,” he said. “Homework,” by way of explanation.

He finally looked at Ronan again, and Ronan was predictably looking back at him. His eyes were like the air, bright with sun and heavy with potential. Adam dragged his gaze away again.

“Okay,” Ronan said.

“Thanks, though,” Adam said. “For the picnic.” He knew he was making it sound as though the picnic had been just for him, but whether it was or not, it felt wrong to let it go unmentioned.

Ronan sat up and shrugged. “Thank Cabeswater,” he said. As if he’d done nothing.

Adam stood and almost, almost, reached down to take Ronan’s hand, help him up, but that would be breaking his own carefully-constructed rule, and if he was going to do that, he could think of at least one rule he would rather have broken earlier.

Ronan stood on his own and tossed the blanket into the basket.

“I’ll thank Cabeswater,” Adam said, “in my dreams.”

Ronan met his eyes and held them, and Adam knew that if he let the holding continue, it wouldn’t ever stop, so he smiled to lighten things again (as though it wasn’t his own fault everything was heavy) and disappeared himself into the tall grass.


End file.
